He nodded, pleased.
“Hey.” The last came from Carter, who’d set his sandwich down so he could turn to face her, straddling the bench.
She’d recognized him straight off when they pulled up, the back of his head unmistakable after spending three years behind it in English class. She’d known his home situation was bad before, that he’d lost his place on the A&M football team, and his scholarship. She knew all about shattered dreams. She’d known he was thinking of prospecting the club, but seeing him up close, face-to-face, was a shock.
He’d always been the sort of All-American golden boy that left girls swooning and mothers reminiscing about their younger years. The sort of boy you wanted to make out with in a backseat, but whom you weren’t afraid to take home to meet your father. Never Leah’s type – she’d grown up knowing that success in any arena wouldn’t be found for her if she chased the popular crowd. Korean, adopted, different, opinionated, uninterested in schoolyard politics, she’d known she wouldn’t fit in and so she hadn’t tried. It was why she and Ava had become such fast friends. It was why she’d never entertained romantic notions about pretty blond boys like Carter.
Well. He was still blond. And he was still pretty: those classic, masculine features, the straight nose, and the full lips.
But hiseyes. Their blue depths were full of shadows; full of unhappiness and cynicism, and a sort of sad resolve that was echoed in the stubble on his jaw, and the scuffs on his boots.
He was properly patched in now, and his cut bore the wear and flaws to prove it. Gone were the polo shirts and the boat shoes. The rolled-up sleeves of his flannel shirt revealed strong, tan forearms and knuckles laced with scars. Old healed-over workshop cuts; evidence of punches thrown, and violence wreaked.
He’d been depressed when he first came back from college, working the till at Leroy’s and wondering what to do with his life. But he’d still been Carter.
The boy looking at her now seemed an entirely different person.
“Hey,” she returned, belatedly, when she’d recovered from the shock.
One corner of his mouth twitched in what wasn’t a smile, like he’d noticed. “You back for good, or just visiting?”
“For good.” She didn’t manage to sound chipper, but she figured he understood all too well what it was like to come back after a big letdown.
“She’s a got place over in Kris’s complex,” Ava said. “Now we’re job-hunting.”
Leah really didn’t want charity, but thatwestill felt good. Unlike Carter, she wasn’t on her own as she returned.
He wasn’t either, anymore, but he had been at first. She wondered if, had things been different, if he’d had a support network, he would have joined the Dogs.
Probably not. And he probably wouldn’t appreciate being asked about it, either.
“Ready?” Ava asked.
“Yeah.” She offered a wave. “Bye, guys. Good to see you again, Carter.”
“Yeah, you, too.” He gave her a flat, unreadable look before he turned back around.
Once they were back in the truck and driving away, she looked toward Ava and said, “God, what happened to him?”
Ava shook her head, frowning. “I don’t really know. But he’s worrying me. Something’s not right.”
Four
Come over 2nite baby boy. Followed by a winky-face emoji. And a confetti emoji.
That last one pulled him up short a moment, as he was stowing his tools and getting ready to leave the shop for the night. Celebration usually had a slightly different meaning for Jazz than it did for other people. Regular civilians went out to dinner. Bikers and club girls, well…things could get wild.
It was after eight, and dark now, beyond the cinched doors. He was the last one here; the other guys had all gone home, but he’d been working on a custom bike and decided to finish the mods he’d been working on all day, rather than leave them for the morning. Now he was pleasantly tired, dirty, hungry – and vaguely unsteady inside in a way that no longer had anything to do with the morning’s hangover. He was just…blah. His usual state of being these days, and he had no idea how to fix it.
Jazz had some ideas, though, if those emojis were anything to go by.
He fired off a return text, cleaned up as best he could in the shop sink, shut off the lights, and headed out, desire and awareness already prickling along his skin and pooling in his belly in anticipation.
When they’d first started…whatever you wanted to call this relationship they’d had going the past few years…Jazz had lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a bad part of town. But she’d asserted herself more firmly at Dartmoor, picking up some of Maggie’s slack after Ash was born, and she’d been able to afford a new place: a modest, but well-appointed condo in a new development that seemed mostly occupied by newly-married couples and bachelors.
The lights were on in the bedroom when he pulled up. A car he vaguely recognized sat beside Jazz’s, a black Honda that he thought he’d seen at the clubhouse before. He braced himself, mentally, as he walked up the steps and to the door, let himself in with the key she’d given him when she first moved in. His pulse pounded in his ears, and in his gut, and his groin. He felt a little dizzy, almost sick with it. Blood already heated. He had a Pavlovian response to Jasmine, to her ideas; fingers and toes tingling, he went down the foyer and into the empty living room. Spotted three wine glasses on the kitchen counter.
“Jazz?”
